Stakeholder-Policy Cooperation

The ESDN Conference 2018 took place on 1-2 October 2018 in Vienna, Austria, at the Austria Center Vienna. It was organized by the ESDN in cooperation with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Sustainability and Tourism as an official event of the incoming Austrian EU Presidency. The Conference brought ring together policymakers and experts from different stakeholder groups from all over Europe.

The topic of the ESDN Conference 2018 was: “Stakeholder-Policy Cooperation in the Age of the SDGs: What new approaches are required to be successful?” The SDGs are broad and complex, which necessitates the cooperation with, and knowledge from, all stakeholders. Given the broad and complex nature of the SDGs, have they changed the way in which the policy world and stakeholder world collaborate? If so, then what is now required to develop successful stakeholder-policy cooperation regarding the implementation of the SDGs?

This Conference looked into new ways, approaches, and examples of how the policy world and stakeholder world collaborate by looking at the practical implementation of diverse stakeholder-policymaker collaboration methods, activities, etc. Cutting-edge examples were presented from many European countries, in which speakers shared the new ways and approaches they are employing stakeholder-policy cooperation methods.